


Building from the Ashes

by Nickidemus



Category: Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:08:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nickidemus/pseuds/Nickidemus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jor-El and Lara decide to have the first naturally born child on Krypton in centuries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Building from the Ashes

The sun was a dying, bloody disk on the horizon, and it always pained Jor-El to see it. Because he knew that’s not how a healthy sun should look. He knew others knew and turned a blind eye, and while he didn’t enjoy feeling anger, he did. How could they not see what was right before them? 

He moved away from the sight, wishing it would put it out of mind, but it never did. He went to Lara then, for even though his fears extended to her, she was a pleasant distraction. In any case, he had something on his mind that he’d put off too long. A dream that while he wished Lara would share it, he couldn’t know until he spoke it aloud. Afraid to. Afraid it would be like the very ground they stood on, fragile and bound to cave in under too much scrutiny. 

“So tell me,” she said just as he opened his mouth to speak, causing him to pause and raise his eyebrows at her. 

“Am I so transparent?” he asked. 

“You are glass, my love,” she smiled, wanting him to smile and glad to see a fragment there at least. “Tell me whatever it is that has absorbed your mind so entirely these past weeks. Normally you’re forthcoming and eager to have me know of your work. It worries me to be left out.” 

He was glad Lara was seated and joined her on the same couch. He touched her hand and began the only way he knew. “What are your thoughts on the way we’ve come to rely on engineered and automated reproduction?” 

Lara blinked at that and took a moment. “It’s how things have been for so long. You’re asking me to question it?” He seemed bemused by that, and she sighed. “I know that we’ve set a standard for ourselves that requires we do it this way. Natural births are considered dangerous, for mother and child. Too many variables. Unknowns. Children born without careful planning and genetic assignment are…” 

“Are what?” 

She winced. “Lesser.” 

“You don’t believe that,” he said and watched her carefully. 

“How can I know what I haven’t seen?” she asked him, and now he did smile. She laughed. “Did I do well? You seem pleased.” 

“You are so very… made for me,” he said, shaking his head. “These were precisely my thoughts. How can we know what is lesser when it’s been centuries since a natural birth took place? We’ve grown so dependent on planning that we’ve forgotten destiny. Fate. Chance. We’ve… forgotten love.” 

“We still have love,” Lara said and touched his face. “Far be it from me to correct you when you’re being romantic.” 

He breathed a laugh, leaning into her hand. “I don’t believe it’s the same. I believe it could be something new and unique, a sort of love no Kryptonian has understood in ages.” 

“May I look at what you’ve read?” she asked. “I’d like to know more about the… process. What I’ll be going through.” 

He kissed her palm. “I didn’t even need to ask,” he said. “You knew.” 

“Didn’t I say you were glass?” 

* * * * * 

Lara brought the subject up a second time only when she felt she truly and entirely understood the implications of what they were doing. They would have to discontinue their daily regimen of contraceptives. They may have to try more than once for a baby, and neither of them could be allowed to succumb to disappointment, and strangely she saw how possible that could become. Once she was with child, her body would go through changes. Some of them beautiful and mysterious. Others uncomfortable or even painful. She may become erratic, depressed, find her emotions hard to manage. They must take pains to hide the baby’s growth from those around them. When it was time to give birth, they could not go to a doctor. They trusted no one well enough. She would have to trust Jor-El entirely with the delivery. It would hurt. It could kill her.

This information and more made a mountain before her, large and gray, one with a ring of gold surrounding it as if the sun was trying to show through from behind. More and more she found her mind focusing on that bright line rather than the mountain, finding it brighter every time. Until she told him, “yes.” 

And Jor-El had been right. Somewhere along the way, their world had lost true love. Bleeding a planet dry wasn’t love. It was foolishness and greed. Children bred to serve a purpose in a crumbling society that had no love could not themselves properly love in return. She felt as if she’d been blinded, the way that Jor-El saw the world so much clearer to her now. She thought she’d understood, but she’d truly seen nothing. 

When they joined, it wasn’t like before. She felt she was the stuff of the future. So was he. She felt a need that wasn’t greedy and for simple pleasure, even that which most of Krypton had forgotten for its lack of dignity. This was deeper than giving in to lust. She was making a family with him, and the word “family” felt so round and full. She’d read pregnant women could be beautiful, glowing, and she wanted him to see her that way. These feelings were foreign and teeming. 

When they needed to try a second and third time as her tests came back negative, she didn’t mind. This process wasn’t grueling. It wasn’t undignified or base. She smiled and shook and laughed and tensed her way through every second, finding him worshipful, in turn more beautiful to her than she ever remembered. 

A positive test did come. As did tears, joyful ones in a world where there was so much wrong to cry about. She held him then and asked, “how can a child born of so much good be anything but perfect, my love?”


End file.
